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WheatNOil Profile picture
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22 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
These graphs are on the effectiveness of the two mRNA vaccines and they are, in a word, incredible.

Going from left to right is days from the ‘first dose’ of the vaccine.

As you go up, you have more COVID cases.
The red in the Pfizer vaccine is placebo and the blue is the vaccine group. It’s reversed in the Moderna for some reason.

By about day 14-ish after the first dose, the placebo group starts to get more COVID cases than the vaccine group... and then it’s not even close!
By about 3.5 months in, the placebo group is getting pummeled.
I know most of my followers don’t look at graphs like that but I can tell you my exact reaction when I first saw them: Holy shit!

The Pfizer vaccine had about 44,000 people in their trial. Moderna had about 30,000. They’re split between the two groups. These are big samples.

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More from @WheatNOil

WheatNOil Profile picture
24 Dec
I can see the TV ad now:

Darnell Nurse on screen wearing medical scrubs. “Hi, I’m Darnell Nurse. As a Nurse, I’m here to tell you how the vaccine works. Let’s say there’s a virus.”

(Image of Matt Tkachuk)
“The vaccine sends instructions to our cells to produce a part of the virus.”

Someone gives a new set of instructions to the Oilers merchandise factory. It starts producing Tkachuk bobble heads.
“Now, the bobble heads can’t hurt us. They’re just bobble heads. But our immune system knows it doesn’t belong.”

Zack Kassian enters a room filled with Tkachuk bobble heads. “What... the fuck... is this?”
Read 6 tweets
WheatNOil Profile picture
24 Dec
Good article here:

theglobeandmail.com/canada/article…
Relevant notes to questions that people have asked me:
- Slightly less effective in elderly people (who usually have a weaker immune response) but still 86% effective. Not as good as 94% for the general population but still very solid.
Pregnancy: Pregnant women weren’t allowed in the study but 13 women got pregnant during the study. About half in the vaccine group and half in placebo. None of them have given birth yet though. So we’ll see.
Read 5 tweets
WheatNOil Profile picture
21 Dec
To understand mutations, it helps to know how viruses work. First, viruses can’t make more of themselves on their own. Two coronaviruses can’t get together, go on a date, have too much to drink, and have a baby COVID.

They need someone else to make more of them.
COVID gets into our cells (using the asshole protein) & basically hijacks our cells. It’s got a gun to our cell and says “Look at me, I’m the captain now.” So our infected cells spend all day doing the virus’ bidding: copying thousands of viruses & making more of them.
But our cells don’t make more virus by loading up Word, pressing print & turning up the number of copies. It has to write out each virus RNA (it’s genetic code) by hand. Like Bart writing lines in the Simpsons opening credits. Over & over, thousands of times. With no spell check.
Read 14 tweets
WheatNOil Profile picture
20 Dec
One common question I got was “What happens if I get the vaccine and I’ve already had COVID?” Related to that, “Should I get the vaccine if I’ve had COVID?” and “how long am I immune for?”

Strap in friends, we’re going on another “way too long thread”.
So let’s say you got COVID and beat it. Firstly, well done!

Your immune cells saw the virus, figured out some areas to attack, ramped up production, and kicked the bastard’s ass. Maybe it was a short battle or maybe a long one but you came out the other side on top.
And now your memory cells are going to remember. They won’t remember the ‘whole’ virus. They’ll remember the parts they successfully attacked.

That might be the infamous asshole protein. It might be some other part of the virus. Or a few different parts.
Read 12 tweets
WheatNOil Profile picture
17 Dec
The mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) are kind of brilliant at a science level. I’ve had a few people in my real non-Twitter life ask me to explain how it works so I’m going to try my best here in this thread while I’m waiting for a patient to show.
The first thing to know is how your immune system works. Basically, your immune cells attack anything foreign to your body. If it sees a protein or a virus or a bacteria or anything that it doesn’t recognize, it launches an attack.
If it’s fighting off a virus, for example, it takes time to build up a full attack. It’s got to figure out what part of the virus to attack & ramp up production of what it needs to attack those parts. That can take a few days. Meanwhile the virus is replicating and expanding.
Read 38 tweets
WheatNOil Profile picture
15 Dec
That’s an awfully wide confidence interval but early evidence suggests that the Moderna vaccine is effective 14-28 days after the ‘first’ dose. The data on asymptomatic infections is important b/c we don’t know that data for the Pfizer vaccine (they didn’t test for it).
Important note: we don’t know ‘how long’ immunity lasts after a single dose. Hence the need for the 2nd dose until we have more data. (We don’t even really know how long immunity lasts after the 2nd dose. Not for sure.)
tldr; the two mRNA vaccines are well beyond my expectations for efficacy. This is good news, my friends.
Read 4 tweets

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